"You read German, then?" said Walcott, sitting down in the chair that Mrs. Hartley had vacated, and looking at Lettice with interest, although he did not abandon the slight affectation of tone and manner that she had noted from the beginning of her talk with him. "How nice that must be! I often wish I knew something more than my schoolboy's smattering of Greek, Latin, and French."
Lettice had read Mr. Walcott's last volume of poems, which were just then exciting considerable interest in the literary world, and she could not help recalling one or two lyrics and sonnets from Uhland, Filicaja, and other Continentals. As though divining her thoughts, Walcott went on quickly, with much more sincerity of tone:
"I do try now and then to put an idea that strikes me from German or Italian into English; but think of my painful groping with a dictionary, before the cramped and crippled idea can reach my mind! I am the translator most in need of condolence, Miss Campion!"
"Yet, even without going to other languages," said Lettice, "there is an unlimited field in our own, both for ideas and for expression—as well as a practically unlimited audience."
"The artists and musicians say that their domains are absolutely unlimited—that the poet sings to those who happen to speak his language, whilst they discourse to the whole world and to all time. I suppose, in a sense, they are right."
He spoke listlessly, as if he did not care whether they were right or wrong.
But Lettice's eyes began to glow.
"Surely in a narrow sense! They would hardly say that Handel or Beethoven speaks to a wider audience than Homer or Shakspeare, and certainly no musician or painter or sculptor can hope to delight mankind for as many centuries as a poet. And, then, to think what an idea can accomplish—what Greek ideas have done in England, for instance, or Roman ideas in France, or French ideas in nearly every country of Europe! Could a tune make a revolution, or a picture destroy a religion?"
"Perhaps, yes," said Walcott, wishing to draw her out, "if the tunes or the pictures could be repeated often enough, and brought before the eyes and ears of the multitude."
"I do not think so. And, at any rate, that could not be done by way of systematic and comprehensive teaching, so that your comparison only suggests another superiority in literary expression. A poet can teach a whole art, or establish a definite creed; he can move the heart and mould the mind at the same time; but one can hardly imagine such an effect from the work of those who speak to us only through the eye or ear."